So I am in the process of changing out the water pump on my piece of **** maxima. Drained coolant from radiator and move the two hoses off of the thermostat for room. Removed tire, splash shield; put the car on stands. Now I loosened the tension on pulley and when I tried to remove the center nut from the pulley ... on the first try the ****ing nut rounded off. There is absolutely no room for a socket to get on with having to remove the engine mounts and lower then engine. I borrowed a 14mm wrench from my friend, it is about 12 inches long and provides lots of torque. Now from rounding the nut off I can not even get the ****ing wrench on the nut. The only other thing I can think of doing but I know it will destroy the pulley is to heat up the nut with a torch and just use pliers to get the nut off.

Has anyone else had this much trouble? It seems to me as my car is one big pile of ****ty rust. Bad enough that Nissans have rust problems to begin with. Any help would be appreciated.

 

If you have a dremel use a cutoff blade and cut the nut off.It seems that there is really no way around replacing the $77 idle pulley anytime you touch it.you really dont want to heat it because there is a bearing in the pulley.

 

borrowing on cjandura's idea, maybe you could get the burrs off the faces of the nut and allow you to get the wrench on in.

 

Ya I was thinking that ... I know heating up the nut will destroy the bearing. I was just afraid this is what it would come to and the only way is to spend the money that I don't have at the moment and don't want to. First I will try sanding off the burrs and using the longer wrench. If that way does not work I will just cut the pulley off and buy a new one.

 

You just need to cut the nut off not the whole pulley.It is a really soft metal so cutting it wont be hard to do just a little slice on either side.

 

My friend had managed to get a socket on it and got it off. YAY! Now tomorrow I can start getting this water pump out.